The old woman looked at me, her eyes vacant and myopic through the thick lenses of her glasses.
“I
don’t know you.” she said.
“It’s
OK Granny, I know you and I’ll remember for both of us.”
I’ll
remember for all of us ….
And thus begins my first book. This will either be on the dedication page or it will be the first sentences of the introduction. Either way, I'm so happy I remembered this! I said that to her long ago on one of my visits to her care facility. I would say Home but it wasn't really a home, it was a place to hang out while waiting to die. The workers there are trained to help bathe and change soiled panties.
I remember the last time I saw my Granny. I was visiting my parents in Hermiston after I had put all my stuff in storage and hit the road to see what I could find. Stephen was with me on the trip but I went to see Granny alone --- I wanted to take my time and really be present with her because I knew this would probably be my last visit. I didn't know where I would end up or how long I would be gone and she was a few months from turning 97 years old. I wanted this visit to last me the rest of my life.
Granny had begun to lose her memories after she turned 80. She fell apart a little after that birthday, I don't think she could wrap her mind around the fact that she was 80 years old. She had always been active and sharp, full of life and ready to laugh. She used to brag about going to the Old Folks Home and volunteering to help, winking because so many of them were younger than her. She was very proud of her vigor and good health; she went to the senior dances three times a week and had a lovely wardrobe of gowns to dress up in when she went.
She was born Opal Grace McDaniel in 1908 in Morrow County, Oregon. I'm not sure if she was born in Heppner or Hardman but I'm pretty sure she was born at home. She was the fourth child of Edward and Emma (Pennington) McDaniel. Her mother died in January 1912, pregnant with a fifth child, when a flu ravaged the area of Idaho where the family was staying while Ed looked for work. They were living in a tent in the middle of winter with all those kids and who knows what they did for heat or food. Dirt poor doesn't begin to describe the situation and it's amazing that any of them survived. Little Opal had just turned three a few months before her mother died and I believe the effect it had on her traveled down through time and continues to leave a trail of tears for all the maternal love that was lost that day. In fact, I believe that the death of Emma McDaniel was the precursor to the death of my own child, Stephen Sandknop, 101 years later. But that's a long story, convoluted and hard to tell. And somehow, that's the story I'm going to try to tell.
I think. Sheesh! It's so confusing, I'm not really sure what I'm doing writing all this except I said I would and I promised Granny that I would remember for all of us. Auntie Jan also wrote her stories from her young life and that's a real help in putting this all together, that and what I already know and have experienced.
A few years before Granny died, I was packing up my car, preparing to leave from a visit with my parents in Hermiston in 2003, when Dad came walking out of the garage carrying a white cardboard box, an OreIda Tator Tots box, to be specific. This family of mine was not very good at record keeping, to say the least! Anyway, he handed it to me and I thought I knew what was in it. Years before, I had been planning to stay with Granny for a few weeks and help her put a cookbook together. I had an airline ticket from Chicago to Portland but a few days before I was to leave, she had a nervous breakdown and got shingles. I'm pretty sure I caused that episode by pressuring her to let me help her compile that book. The trip was cancelled and never spoken of again, except she told me she would put all the notes in a box and give it to me when she saw me next so that I could do it on my own if I wanted to. So when Dad handed me that box, I thought it contained recipes. I took it home and stashed it in the garage, moving it along with all my other stuff nine times in the next six years. It finally came to rest in my shed when I moved into this house on Latah in Boise in 2007.
Then one spring day in 2012, as I was setting up my deck furniture, preparing for summer in the house where I still live, I came across that box in the shed and thought, hey! I should at least open it and see what's inside. It's my inheritance, after all. Granny had died in January 2006 and I had not given that white box of hers a second thought in all that time. So I put the patio table together, opened up the umbrella and pulled up a chair with the box in front of me. I slit open the tape, damaged as it was from all the years and moves, and disappeared into another world.
OK, 964 words today ... a perfect start to my intention to write 500 to 1000 words a day until I get a first draft written on or before March 25, 2017. Day One is a rousing success and tomorrow I'll have found the stories I want in Granny's OreIda box and get them added.
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